"'Liberal arts' really means education that is broad, and not strictly vocational, in that it gives you the ability to exercise free choice as a citizen and thinker. A course in philosophy or history will improve a student’s communication skills in ways that will ultimately help them find a job, but the core purpose of the class is to study deeper lessons of the self or the past. That’s very different from the way a course in electrical engineering might cultivate skills students will use in a career designing circuits.
"True freedom, as I see it, is the ability to choose wisely between arguments and theories about how the world works and understand how language can manipulate or elevate us. This is why 17th-century English poet and revolutionary John Milton focused his foundational anti-censorship text, 'Areopagitica,' on the civic value of the liberal arts. 'Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, above all liberties,' Milton wrote.
"One of the greatest defenses of the liberal arts in America was written just 37 years after the Civil War by W.E.B. Du Bois. 'The Souls of Black Folk' is probably best known today as a groundbreaking work of sociology.
"Du Bois also insisted that without access to a complete and comprehensive liberal arts education, Black Americans can never truly be free. To the question, 'Shall we teach them trades or train them in liberal arts?' Du Bois answered, 'Both.' But he maintained that liberal arts must always be the foundation, because 'to make men, we must have ideals, broad, pure, and inspiring ends of living, not sordid money-getting, not apples of gold.'” - Blaine Greteman
Article: What are the Liberal Arts? A Literature Scholar Explains
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